American Soviet Jewry Movement Posters and Ephemera

Trip Reports

Thousands of the American Soviet Jewry Movement activists took on a level of involvement that potentially jeopardized personal safety. Enlisted by Soviet Jewry organizations to travel to the U.S.S.R. under the pretense of tourist, these activists employed intricate strategies to covertly make contact with Jews. They recorded first-hand observations of the conditions, problems and needs experienced within the totalitarian regime. These trip reports were widely circulated to Jewish communal organizations in the U.S. and beyond and were a crucial part of how worldwide Soviet Jewry awareness was achieved.

Audio Collections

The address of Anatoly (Natan) Sharansky to the Second International Congress on the Soviet Jewry recorded in February of 1976. Sharansky, one of the prominent activists of the Soviet Jewry Movement, who spent 10 years in Soviet prisons, was released as a result of the American Soviet Jewry Movement campaign.. He later immigrated to Israel and took an active part in political life there becoming a government minister in several Israeli cabinets. In this 1976 address Sharansky expresses gratitude on his and other refuseniks’ behalf, for the support of their cause as he expresses hope for its success. Sharansky names refuseniks that received long prison sentences, describes a new anti-Jewish campaign started by the Soviet authorities, and states that the fight of the Soviet Jews will continue.(1 MB QuickTime).

Audio collections are accessible on CD at the Center for Jewish History Reading Room.

“Russia Reports”

A weekly radio program produced in the early 1970s for broadcast on the New York City radio station WEVD (then owned by the Jewish newspaper The Forward). The 13- to 14-minute-long programs usually featured an interview with a politician, foreign policy expert, recently-returned visitor to Soviet Jews, or a recent émigré. There were 179 numbered programs, though fewer recordings – approximately 130 – as some programs were apparently rebroadcast. There are no transcripts of these tapes.

Civil Rights Supporters

Various civil rights and cultural leaders were among the early supporters of the movement, and the NCSJ Records also contain sound recordings of interviews with and speeches by Martin Luther King (1966), Bayard Rustin, Tom Stoppard, Harrison Salisbury, and other prominent individuals.

USSR Secret Recordings

The third major category of recordings consists of audiocassette tapes made in secret in the USSR. These include conversations with Anatoly (now Natan) Sharansky, Ida Nudel, Andrei Sakharov and other, less-famous refuseniks. One cassette contains a recording of a speech by Andrei Sakharov accepting in absentia an award from the Anti-Defamation League; another is chillingly labeled: "Alla Smelianski's plea, Jan 29, '79. Mark to commit suicide March 29." Also among the cassettes are several recordings of several telephone conversations arranged under the auspices of NCSJ’s “Call a Russian” program in the early 1970s, in which individuals in the United States made phone contact with Soviet Jews to discuss their particular circumstances, share information on the emigration process, and offer encouragement.